KANNADA

Kannada is the official language of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken by about 44 million people in the Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. And a notable communities in U.S, U.A.E, U.K, Singapore, Australia, Mauritius, Thailand.

Phases of kannada language development

Old Kannada (halegannada) from 450-1200 CE

Middle Kannada (Nadugannada) from 1200-1700 CE

Modern Kannada from 1700 to the present.

Kannada is influenced to an appreciable extent by Sanskrit. According to the Dravidian scholars Bhadriraju Krishnamurti and Kamil Zvelebil, Kannada and Tamil split into independent languages from the proto Tamil-Kannada sub-group around 5th - 6th. century B.C.

Status

The Director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Udaya Narayana Singh, submitted a report in 2006 to the Indian government arguing for Kannada to be made a classical language of India. In 2008 the Indian government announced that Kannada was to be designated as one of the classical languages of India.

Proto Kannada -> Pre Old Kannada -> Old Kannada -> Modern Kannada.

First kannada to Engliah Dictionary

A German priest, the Reverend Ferdinand Kittel, composed the first Kannada–English dictionary, consisting of more than 70,000 words. Ferdinand Kittel also wrote a book on Kannada grammar called "A Grammar of the Kannada Language: Comprising the Three Dialects of the Language".

Regulated body

Number of speakers

This language has about 44,000,000 speakers.

References

http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm